How I learned to stop worrying and love the GIT
I used to dread source control.
My projects “weren’t big enough” to merit source control.
My changes “were too small” to merit source control.
My development style was “too incremental” to merit source control.
Even if all three of those are true, source control is the best thing I’ve ever done for qRPSd!
The ability to A) view differences and B) branch code is invaluable in any real-world software application’s development cycle.
Yes, committing adds an extra step to the already tiring process of developing,testing,uploading,testing again - but I find it to be totally worth it now!
It kind of leaves me wondering, maybe I should try test driven development.
I mean, I have the same reserves about TDD - my project isn’t complex enough to require testing. My project is small enough that I can easily test all facets of it. My project isn’t factored out into plugins, so integration testing is of nil importance.
But, quite honestly, if source control has impacted the way I develop drastically. Then why wouldn’t I give TDD a try, maybe it too will impact my development style.
Granted, I think my biggest problem is that I don’t think modularly; and I consider that a weakness.
(Yes, I just redid a fricken dice roller to be more object oriented… but still, it’s far from modular.)
[Figure 1-1: Robbie completely redid DiceRollerTM++4000*]
I don’t write plugins - I write projects. I write singular entities. Pieces that all fit together in some sort of giant puzzle.
I can’t just take a piece from my “Three Cute Puppies on a Beach at Sunset” puzzle and shove it in my “Eiffel Tower” puzzle and expect it to fit. Similarly, I can’t take code from qRPSd, shove it into rBlog, and expect it to work.
Now granted, the dice roller is pretty damn flexible - because it was designed as a standalone Ruby application first, then ported into the Rails application.
Still - I’m no plugin developer. I don’t intend my code to be shared… and maybe I should change that.
Overall, I’ve come to realize that sometimes we just have to take a leap of faith - and trust that thousands upon thousands of programmers know what they’re talking about when they say “your source should be under source control” and/or “your source should be modular [and open.]”
In other news: I have off work tomorrow. It’ll be spent either
A) Working on my incredibly rusty Java skills to help prepare me for the rest of the semester in Java Programming.
or
B) Working on qRPSdrail
I’m leaning towards A) because B) tends to be a lot more work than its worth, and furthermore I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out why “string”.length didn’t do anything in class today. (Turns out, in Java, you need “string”.length(), parentheses are required or it won’t be recognized as a method. FFFFFU-; Ruby you have spoiled me.)
*If you seriously want to transcribe and use my code - feel free. If I were to find it in some other project, I won’t hold you accountable.
Honestly though, it’d be really cool if you e-mail’d me. They have this new feature in GMail called attachments - it would let me just send you a digital copy of the code! Furthermore, I’d know who’s using my code and why.
I don’t actually think anyone would want some trivial dice rolling code for Rails - but hey… it’s a small world after all.
